Imaging the Developing Brain – An overview of the developing human connectome project (DHCP)
Few advances in neuroscience could have as much impact as a precise global description of human brain connectivity (connectome) and its variability. Understanding this connectome in detail will provide insights into fundamental neural processes and intractable neuropsychiatric diseases. Currently, the connectome of the mature adult brain is in progress. The Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP) aims to make major scientific progress by creating the first 4-dimensional connectome of early life. Our goal is to create a dynamic map of human brain connectivity from 20 to 44 weeks post-conceptional age, which will link together imaging, clinical, behavioural, and genetic information. This unique setting, with imaging and collateral data in an expandable open-source informatics structure, will permit wide use by the scientific community, and to undertake pioneer studies into normal and abnormal development by studying well-phenotyped and genotyped group of infants with specific genetic and environmental risks that could lead to Autistic Spectrum Disorder or Cerebral Palsy.
Biography
Professor Daniel Rueckert is Head of the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. He joined the Department of Computing as a lecturer in 1999 and became senior lecturer in 2003. Since 2005 he is Professor of Visual Information Processing and leads the Biomedical Image Analysis group. He received a Diploma in Computer Science (equiv to M.Sc.) from the Technical University Berlin and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Imperial College London. Before moving to Imperial College, he has worked as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Division of Radiological Sciences and Medical Engineering, King’s College London where he has worked on the development of non-rigid registration algorithms for the compensation of tissue motion and deformation. The developed registration techniques have been successfully used for the non-rigid registration of various anatomical structures, including in the breast, liver, heart and brain and are currently commercialized by IXICO, an Imperial College spin-out company. During his doctoral and post-doctoral research he has published more than 400 journal and conference articles. Professor Rueckert is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, a member of the editorial board of Medical Image Analysis, Image & Vision Computing and a referee for a number of international medical imaging journals and conferences. He has served as a member of organising and programme committees at numerous conferences, e.g. he has been General Co-chair of MMBIA 2006 and FIMH 2013 as well as Programme Co-Chair of MICCAI 2009, ISBI 2012 and WBIR 2012. In 2014, he has been elected as a Fellow of the MICCAI society and in 2015 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and as fellow of the IEEE.